The present invention concerns a windscreen wiper blade assembly, notably for motor vehicles.
The invention concerns more particularly a windscreen wiper blade assembly with a wiper blade on which a top longitudinal connecting flange is connected to a component of a support structure for the wiper blade, such as, for example, a cross-member of an articulated support structure, which includes an open connecting ring, also referred to as a connecting claw, substantially in the form of an inverted U which straddles the flange and each of whose vertical legs is extended by a transverse lug which is received under a bottom horizontal face of the flange, and of the type in which the flange has at least one longitudinal groove formed in a vertical lateral face of the flange and which receives a reinforcing rib produced in the form of a horizontal reinforcing plate, one outer lateral edge of which has a locking notch designed to receive a member for locking the component of the support structure in the longitudinal position with respect to the rib.
An example of such a design for a windscreen wiper blade assembly is described and depicted in the document FR-A-2 502 086, in which the locking notch formed in the lateral edge of the rib is delimited by two stop lugs produced by means of cutting out, which project transversely outwards with respect to the overall plane of the outer longitudinal edge of the rib.
Apart from the complexity of the cutting out to be effected in the rib and the need to deform the stop lugs outwards after the cutting out has taken place, this design has the drawback of making it necessary to deform elastically the vertical legs of the connecting claw slightly away from each other when the flange is inserted by means of longitudinal sliding in the claw until the vertical leg passes the ramp formed by the first retaining lug that it meets so as then to be embedded elastically in the notch. This phenomenon of deformation of the claw is accentuated where the wiper blade is of symmetrical design with respect to a vertical mid-plane, the two ribs having locking notches arranged longitudinally opposite each other.
Moreover, the design described in this document makes the wiper blade particularly difficult to remove, in order to be replaced, in so far as the operator must compress the retaining lugs transversely inwards in order to make the longitudinal extraction of the wiper blade, by sliding the upper flange between the vertical legs of the connecting claw, possible again.
A design for a windscreen wiper arm is also known from the document FR-A-2 215 048, in which the locking notches formed in the longitudinal reinforcing ribs are very simple in shape and have no elastically deformable retaining lug projecting transversely.
In this design, the longitudinal immobilisation of the rib with respect to the flange is ensured by means of an intermediate bracket which is positioned vertically on the flange and which requires cut-outs or slots to be produced in the material forming the body of the flange opposite the locking notches formed in the outer lateral edge of the reinforcing rib. Moreover, the positioning of the claw in the form of an open ring of the connecting cross-member is still effected by passing over the elastically deformable lugs arranged on the intermediate locking bracket, the design of the latter being particularly complex and the removal operations again being made difficult by the need to deform elastically the locking lugs formed on the outside of the locking bracket.